At last it is my turn to get my hands on the traveling hacker box filled with goodies and boy is it quite heavy! As I slowly open the box the view is obscured by a Motorola Lapdock. The exact one I have already which I am surprised as most people have the older version. So much stuff I don’t know where to begin!

I found a couple of OSH Park boards which is to be expected, ;) some LCDs that have seen better days. One of them looks like it was damaged, probably in shipping. Quite the number of old parts. Various microcontrollers as well including some LPC-Link and NXP bare chips, tempting but wouldn't’ be able to use them for a long time. I didn’t take a picture but there is a baggy with an Atmel and Microchip microcontroller from what looks like the early 90’s. Ha! I wonder if that was on purpose? Back then no one would've guessed they would become the same company.

There was just a few items that caught my interest. I have always wanted to try a multi-core micro. So I couldn’t resist the Propeller and the XMOS starter kit. Be great for expanding my experience with other micros. Finally another thing on my list is a digital RGB strip which happened to be in the box. Perfect reactive lighting for the office. ;)

Here the items I put in the box. The ones in the static bags are stuff I make, some of you might recognize them, but there are some surprise prototypes in there that are making their first trip into the wild. The final item I added I hope someone can find useful which has a lot of potential since the firmware isn’t locked down. And thanks to my wife in helping with packing the box and shipping it. No way I could get to all fit in there again, ha! This is the last stop in California, now on its way to Oregon. Wish I could go with it!

... before it headed off to Bryan at Hayward, CA. I'm writing this log from Mountain View (according to Wikipedia that's where the city gets its name from) Thanks to my (busy) internship in the US this summer I'm the first Indian to receive the Travelling Hacker Box before it gets to get out of the US to EU and Asia. And that also means that I'm away from my home and I didn't have a whole bunch of my electronics to travel with me to be put in the box.

The Box arrived at my place on 20th of May. Here are my highlights of the box:

This was taken while repacking the box - as you can see in the picture the custard reinforcement on the box's gone. All that is left is a piece of bubble wrap. I'm not sure when this happened but that's how the box is now.

The box was as usual packed to the brim. There were two displays, an iPod, a cell phone, a Verizon MiFi thingy, a Visa card swipe machine. Then there was a plastic box full of small electronic widgets. I opened almost everything in the box but didn't take pics.

@alpha_ninja's tiny bug robot in close-up. One side's functional, the other side seems to work sometimes and sometimes not but it doesn't work as a whole.

This is what I took from the box:

A bunch of stickers, two tiny prototyping PCBs, a LED matrix (have to figure out how to make it work), a $10 OSHPark coupon (you have to look for it in the corners :) ), a dot matrix display, a fan and a Cypress PSoC 4 Kit.

This is what I put:

The #BeagleLogic kept in this box is unit #2. Fun fact: There are currently 3 BeagleLogics in existence #0, #1 and #2 - #0 is with me (not for sale or giveaway , don't ask :) ), and #2 was put by me in the box (which Bryan Lyon has apparently taken already). They are special as they were sent to the US for judging in the Hackaday Prize Best Product category last year.

There's also a spare BeagleLogic cape OSHPark purple board that @Drew Fustini gave to me at the Maker Faire 2016. Thanks Drew!

And then in the middle of them is a TI Tiva TM4C123 eval board.

Also after I took the photo I also threw in a #(Yet another) BeagleBone Display+CapTouch cape into the box - it's a blue PCB, you can see pics of the board in the project details should you decide to build it.

In closing I'd like to thank @Benchoff for sending the box my way and I'd like to receive it once again when I reach India and it's there.

Cheers to the #Travelling Hacker Box !

Note for those who would like to avoid spoilers: Do not read this past the "What I took" section of this log until after you get your turn with the box. I'm going to go over most of what is in the box and talk about them.

What I took from the box

I took Abhishek Kumar's BeagleLogic (including a beaglebone, very cool man), a small speaker and an awesome resistor with a gold colored heat sync.

I also took a Renesas YRDKRL78G13 Dev board. Mainly because of it's size, but I'll do some cool stuff with it.

Warning!

SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Okay, if you're sure...

Last chance to change your mind.

Okay, really your last chance.

Are you sure you don't want it to be a surprise?

Okay, okay, you're big boys (and girls) you can make your own decisions...

What was in the box

Here is the box as I received it. It came in a Large Priority Mail box. It's a bit pricy, but the box is heavy so it's probably the best shipping option.

The box came with a single layer of bubble wrap all around. Not sure how well that really protects the items. The box itself seems to be still in good shape, so I'll be reusing it for the next person.

As you can see, it's actually quite full. Abhishek Kumar, the previous holder included PCBs to a couple of capes he has designed for the BeagleBone. He's also included a Beaglebone itself with his latest BeagleLogic cape.

There were quite a few interesting items. Here is the Nettop board that Benchoff mentioned as well as a Renesas devkit. There is also a VISA terminal. It looks quite old with what looks like a VFD display. As well as a TI Lanchpad board. Note also that in this picture you can see a part of the giant tote box of miscellanea. It's full of a variety of things and it would've taken me so long to bring out and photograph that I've decided to skip those. They'll be a good surprise to anyone who wants to go through them.

Here is a box of some misc gear. None of this is too coherent, mostly stuff to tear apart for parts. There was an interesting DVD laser that could be pretty powerful, but I didn't want to experiment with what could burn out pretty easily.

As Benchof showed in his log a few weeks ago, there is a cool viewfinder display. To anyone who is willing to do some work this would make an excellent wearable display.

Next up is what looks to be a very nice stepper motor with a nice mounting bracket. In order to make what I included fit into the box, I had to remove the bracket from the stepper motor. If you take the motor please remove the bracket too since it will be useless without the motor.

What I added to the box

I added a few nRF24L01s, an arduino clone as well as some LED light strip.

Some really cool LED Displays (Info on using them available http://www.robotroom.com/MultiSegmentLEDDisplay.html ) and a TPLink router. These are what we used pre-raspberry pi for a SBC. Still a useful little box, though a little outdated now. At the very least you can still use them as routers.

A Motorola Lapdock. This is a cool way to turn a Raspberry Pi or other SBC into a full laptop, including battery, screen, keyboard, and mouse. This particular lapdock though needs a new battery. You can get them online and do it yourself, or you could modify it to work directly from DC input.

The box will go out to the next in line tomorrow.

After travelling 21,838 miles around the United States, the Travelling Hacker Box makes it to the Hackaday Home Base in Pasadena.

Here's a full inventory of the goodies:

1.75 ABS and PLA and a Sony Handycam eyepiece

A delrin Buddashnozzle, hobbed bolt, and some PTFE tape

Another Box! What's in the box?!

Various crystals

A random selection of various parts in the second box

A tiny CRT

A Someformoj video chip.

More random parts. Oh. "Some form of"

iPod, Verison MiFi and a hexbug.

Big honkin' cap

stepper motors, analog meter, 7" display

Wall wart, LED display, vintage transistors

Stickers and a tablet. Yes, the tablet was charged.

Arduino motor shield and an epson line scanner

Stepper motor driver kit

Pic16 programmer

Beauty shot

WHAT I KEPT:

What I removed:

Seriously, a wall wart? Nobody needs that.

THE PLAN FOR NOW.

Here's a map of where the travelling hackerbox has... travelled:

So, what does that mean for you? If you live in a state with a beach, a tim hortons, or immigration and customs enforcement, you need to drop a line in the hacker chat for the travelling hackerbox. You could also drop Benchoff a personal note on hackaday.io. People confirmed already are: Pablo, jarek319, Michael in minnesota, and SpaceKiwi. They know who they are.

Contents:

Added:

Note: that green LED-looking thing isn't just an LED. That long assembly is from a scanner, presumably CMOS. I want someone to turn the lightbulb wire assembly into an ESP-based light. And if you can get that hexbug working, keep it! The large chip (bottom left) comes with little information, check out the electronics grab box teardown (from electronics goldmine) for all I know about it.

Removed: 1 ESP-01, 1 Nano knockoff, that fancy LED switch, one of those large LCD displays, and stickers.

When I got home from work yesterday, I'm the I.T. Director of a call center, in my home office/workshop was the box I'd been eagerly waiting for all day. The Traveling HAD Box! I was pretty surprised that I got to take a part in this, didn't think it would actually come to me.

Good size box, just bursting full of hacking goodness! Couldn't wait to open it!

That's what I like to see!

There was tons of stuff in this box! There's a starage container inside the box taking up a good amount of space, you wouldn't believe how much stuff can be fit in it! But there is everything in there, switches, rectifiers, shrink tubing, transformers, a little CRT, so many boards not to mention the million other things in the box. I didn't get many pictures, sorry guys, I was more interested in the stuff than taking pictures.

Here's what was in the storage container.

I grabbed:

-DVB-T+DAB+FM USB Dongle (ive been wanting to get my feet wet with SDR)

-Seeed Studio Motor Shield

-Double sided proto boards

-One of the two XMOS StartKits

-A few stickers and... oh yeah a bridge rectifier

I am adding:

-Arduino Nano with pins (not soldered)

-One of my first little analog multimeters

-chrome colored round button switch with LED ring

-3D Printer Hotend Pack ( hotend, 2 nozzles, tubing, plumbers tape, and hobbed bolt for the extruder)

-Stepper Diver for RAMPS board

-2 digit 7 segment display

-Microwave AC Capacitor

-other misc. pieces that would fit

I wanted to add as much value as I took from the box. Oh and there was a little bag with a cookie or something in it but it was completely destoyed, nothing but cookie dust in the bag so I threw that in the trash to make room for other stuff.

Some of the items I put in the box.

I'm hoping to be able to send it to it's next destination by Thursday...........

-Happy Hacking Guys and Girls!!!

After a long wait, the box showed up at my work.

This box is quite heavy.

Hey look, a nice little hand-written note. :D

There are a LOT of goodies in this box! So many parts that I wouldn't know what to do with or have any use for right now.

So, I've decided on grabbing a few of the smaller pieces.

1 double sided protoboard
1 HD44780 compatible 2x20 LCD character display
1 Power bar
1 Qi wireless charger
1 Qi Wireless charger reciever
1 Jolly Wrencher sticker
1 USB DVB Receiver

I'm working on building a CNC, where the protoboard, the display, and the power bar would come in handy. I've always been fascinated with wireless charging so the Qi peaks my interest, and of course I need to add to my sticker collection.

I will update the post as soon as I have everything that's going in the box together.

My contributions to the box are:

4 Oscillators (8, 10, 15, and 25 MHz

2 Arduino Motor Shields

1 DVB USB tuner (same as the old one, but with a smaller antenna port)

Some FSFE stickers.

Next up, it's off to Maine, and I'll be taking it to the post office over lunch today!

What an exciting thing to get in the mail! The THB was packed to the brim with all sort of electronic (and non-electronic) goodies.

I enjoyed rummaging through everything, and had to look up a few of the parts to see what they were. I really wanted to grab one of the tiny CRT viewfinders, but decided not to, as my skills aren't yet at a point where I'd be able to do anything with one.

I decided to take these items

• Arduino Uno
• A switch
• Two awesome old transistors
• Some HaD stickers
• New Hampshire Pure Maple syrup
• Hawaii cookie (not in picture)

Also not in any pictures, I took the liberty of pulling the Amazon kindle display (it didn't have the battery or logic board) and replaced it with a fully functioning Motorola Droid Xyboard 10.1 tablet. The tablet can even do Verizon LTE if you throw a SIM card into it.

After pouring over all of my parts boxes, I found what I thought was a meaningful (for what I have) contribution- I hope that those after me feel the same way. I've included the following

• Five HD44780 compatible 2x20 LCD character displays
• Three mini breadboards
• One capacitor 2200uF at [I forget]v
• Four double sided protoboards
• Small 5v fan
• Ultrasonic range finder
• Two ESP8266-01
• One WS8212B LED
• Breadboard Arduino kit
• a few older HackADay stickers
• Qi wireless charger
• Qi Wireless charger reciever
• Cherry switch that cycles from 0 to 7

But there's a twist!
While packing the box (medium size flat rate isn't much space to work with...), I discovered that I didn't have enough room to fit the PSP back in, the last item to pack in. I re-tried packing everything a few times, but still came out with the same issue. So, I decided to keep the PSP and continue the food addition tradition going by adding a tube of Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies in the little space left. UPDATE: I also added a 30GB iPod Video right before shipping, since there was room and I found said iPod.

First thing tomorrow, I ship the box off to Wisconsin!

I got home yesterday afternoon to find this on my doorstep...

WooHoo! Fun ensues...

Here we get a look at DainBramage's excellent packing skills...

So, I pulled everything out for a good look at it all...

After spending a few hours looking at everything and thinking of the many, many different things I could do with a portion of the stuff, here's what I decided to keep:

The Adafruit Pro Trinket

1 of 2 of the Addicore nRF24L01/ESP things

1/3 of the perfboards

Bag of buttons & xtals

Bag of 7 segment displays

1 of the treats from Hawaii :)

Since a couple of things I wanted to put in there would in no way fit, lol, this is what I put in:

Here's what I put in:

PSP model 1001

Arduino Uno

5 axis Accelerometer/Gyroscope thing

Realtek WiFi USB dongle

I really had fun poking through all of this like a treasure hunt, but on it must go. There are more recipients waiting, and more miles to travel so, sealed up and ready to head to California.

It should be heading out with today's post, so....

Have a good journey my friend :)

EDIT: 12:28pm, Well I missed the Post Office shipping office open hours by about 10 minutes. Since Monday is a holiday, looks like it won't be on it's way until Tuesday 2/16. :(

Holy Smokes!!!

The Traveling Hacker Box was placed in the mail on the afternoon of January 27, in Hawaii. Today, January 30, I received it in central New Hampshire! Even the mail carrier was surprised that it arrived so quickly. Kudos to the US Postal Service for sending the box across 5000 miles in less than 3 days, despite the fact that it was sent via plain old $13 standard flat-rate priority mail. I'm not sure I'll ever use another carrier after this.

The box arrived in good condition, despite having broken the sound barrier on its way here (yes, I am kidding, please don't nit-pick).

I had planned on doing a YouTube video of me opening the box, but by the time it got here I was just too excited to bother with setting the camera up. I'll still do a video, but I'll have to exclude the opening ceremonies.

Next I laid out the contents of the box on my work bench. Please excuse the condition of the towel, it has seen several years of hard use on my bench. It's ugly, stained, burned, and has a metric butt-tonne of solder blobs all over it, but it is still functional and I always know where my towel is (I feel all cool and froody).

Most of these items will look familiar to you if you have been following this project, as they were nicely presented in previous logs. I will limit my descriptions to those things that I don't remember seeing before.

1: BigIslandCandies.com shortbread treats. Those definitely came from Hawaii. I'll probably give one a try but leave the rest for future box recipients.

2: A strip of WS2812B NeoPixel LEDs, in a bag that also includes a strip of header pins and a couple of breakout boards. Those puppies will be staying here, as I've always wanted some NeoPixels to play with.

The rest of the stuff looks familiar. There are some really cool things that came in the box, but I will be leaving most of them in the box as it continues on its merry way. These are the things I decided to grab:

Those switches will be perfect for a 12V power controller project I'm working on, the perfboards will be very helpful for future Arduino projects, the NeoPixels I already mentioned, and I've been wanting some solar cells to experiment with for quite some time. Thank you to whomever provided these goodies!

Here are the things I'm currently planning on adding to the box, though there may be some changes to this bunch depending on how well they fit into the box and whether I get any new ideas between now and when I seal up the box.

At the top are some vintage DPDT switches to replace the ones I took, to their right are some vintage (early-mid 1960s) oddball transistors. Going clockwise, there are six small perfboards to replace the three I took. These are very handy for small projects. Below them is a 10,000µF 100V capacitor, and to its right is an RTL-SDR for anyone interested in radio. This one has been modified with a BNC antenna connector, because I hate tiny antenna connectors. Continuing clockwise, there is a 12VAC to 5VDC USB power supply board. Next is a Hack-A-Day edition ProTrinket microcontroller. Above it is a pair of Addicore nRF24L01 transceivers. Above those are some vintage 7-segment LED displays that would be perfect for a retro project. Last but not least, in the center of the photo, is a pair of XMOS StartKit microcontrollers. These are multi-core MCUs that (I think) program in fairly straightforward C. More info can be had on the XMOS web site. They are way too much for the kind of projects I do, so hopefully someone else can get some use out of them. There may be some other items included, and the capacitor may or may not make it into the box due to it's size.

Speaking of which, there was one item which I very much wanted to include, but sadly it just won't fit into the box:

Bummer, no frickin' lasers.

So the box has now made it further than the original one had, according to @Benchoff . So far, so good. If we keep this going, we can make a lot of people happy. If one of us gets selfish, it hurts everyone. Let's all be decent and keep this going.

Long Live The Traveling Hacker Box!